Based on our latest paper on interactions between nitrate availability and shade avoidance (Gautrat et al., 2024, Nature Communications: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-52828-y) Wageningen University wrote a nice news item that really tries to open our highly detailed and molecular biology-type research to the general, science-interested public. You can read the news release here.
While talking to the science writer about our paper, a journalist for a Dutch popular science journal, KIJK, shared a very wild Perspective paper from international colleagues for our expert opinion to comment in their news release. Normally, this paper and their ideas would have escaped our attention, but now we learnt about ideas to bypass photosynthesis in plants by growing them on acetate for organic carbon and energy, in the absence of any light. Solar panels are used to generate the required electricity for acetate formation from CO₂ electrolysis, and the growing system is dubbed electro-agriculture, find the paper here and the news item in Dutch via this link. Being available for outreach activities did not only help the journalist, it also helped us to learn something very new.